Where this is going is a clear showdown on a large number of levels. I wish I could be optimistic about this being resolved decisively for the good guys but I think most likely we are likely to see a codification of the same stalemate.

The NSA has created a large market for services like Silent Circle and this means that a larger number of wiretaps and the like are likely to "go dark" as a result of encryption. We need fully open source and federated versions of things like Silent Circle has and those will come about.

But this will lead to new battles about encryption and government access to encryption. As the people start realizing that everything is tapped by default, they will start protecting themselves.

Wiretaps were tolerated when we could trust in processes that would guarantee that they would not be abused. Now that we know that this trust has been broken there is no way to go back.

We will see two battles in the near future. The first will be a battle over the size and scope of the surveillance state. I fear the NSA will win that one hands down.

But the second is over government access to encryption backdoors. We have more reason to be optimistic here.

Things are shaping up to create a huge showdown. I, for one, am relatively afraid of the consequences even if we win the second battle.